Morrigan's Magic
by Drucilla
Summary: Four mundanes, three witches, two sorcerers, one psychic, and a partridge in a pear tree. Rated for some language. Completed. (without the partridge or pear tree)
1. Prologue

It had been a long, hard, headache-filled day. First there had been the mother-turned-schoolteacher who had wanted to know if her daughter would be all right in the high school she'd chosen. Then there had been the elderly couple looking for their daughter (who was dead, but they didn't know that). There had been the hyperactive young man who had wanted to find out what his boss was up to (which made no sense, considering his boss was also dead), whom she had eventually almost shoved out the door... every time he touched the cards she got sharp, blinding migraines. And then there had been the three daughters, who had wanted to know that their parents were safe on the 'other side.' Meredith groaned and sank further into the tub. That last one had been the absolute last straw.   
  
Now, at least, she was safely ensconced in her tub, hot berry-scented steam pouring over her and soothing music playing in the background. The only light in the room was candlelight, also berry scented. In another few minutes she would step out of the tub and drain it, put on her big and fluffy bathrobe, and drip on into the living room to watch some mindless television. Maybe Law & Order.   
  
Except her cat had other plans.  
  
Meredith shut her eyes and groaned as the black kitten leaped up into the bath. With just a little bit of luck and the will of the Goddess, all the stupid cat wanted to do was play in the bubble bath. With a lot of luck, the cat would stick her paw into the water, yowl, and run off again like she usually did. But something in the days events had told her that if fate didn't conspire to throw something big her way soon, the Goddess bloody well would. And besides, it had been several months since anything really bad had happened.  
  
The cat sat on the corner of the tub and stared at her.  
  
"Oh, come on, Moon..." Meredith pleaded, opening her eyes as soon as she felt the cat's piercing gaze. "Don't do this to me. Not tonight... please? I had a hell of a day and I just want to relax and go to bed..."  
  
The cat blinked.  
  
"Don't do this to me, cat... I mean it. I'll dump you in the water."  
  
The cat blinked.  
  
"I hate it when you do this."  
  
Blink.  
  
"Okay, FINE. Talk to me. Deliver your oh-so-important message and then get the hell out so I can get some sleep..." Meredith sunk into the tub until the bubbles were just beneath her eyes. "Shoot."  
  
old man kriticos is opening the eye  
  
"WHAT?!"   
  
Meredith leaped to her feet in the tub, splashing the cat (who duly yowled and fled). Then she abruptly skidded and would have fallen had she not grabbed the towel-rack behind her. She swore like a sailor, kicking the plug out of the tub and setting the water to drain. "Goddammit. That crack-brained son of a bitch. I thought he was dead..."  
  
you thought he thought everybody thought. that's what the boy thought.   
  
"Boy..." She grabbed a towel and started drying herself off even as she hurried into her room. "What boy? What the hell are you talking about?"  
  
the seeing boy  
  
"Oh. That boy."  
  
kriticos used him to help make the eye see. the boy doesn't know what it does. kriticos has a new helper now, many helpers. he will open the eye...  
  
"I know, I know, all right already! Shut up! Shut the hell up." Meredith sighed. "I hate it when you do this to me, you know that."   
  
A discontented yowl and the sound of a cat attempting to raspberry came from behind her curtains.   
  
"Okay, fine. I suppose I'd better get my soggy butt over to the goddamn house, then. It is still at the house, right?" She didn't wait for an answer, and didn't even get one, really. "Kit, kit, where's the witch kit..." A dark green duffel bag revealed itself as the cat leaped to the closet and knocked some dresses down. "You're such a help." She grabbed it.  
  
"If Kriticos is opening the eye, that means he's going to have some pretty heavy duty protections around it. And if he's going to do what I think he's going to do..." she pulled a small vial out of the bag, sniffed it experimentally, then pulled another one out and replaced the first. "I'm going to need some hell of a lot of protection."   
  
Naked, Meredith stood in front of the mirror. What had once been a liquid liner bottle became a quick-fix warding bottle with the simple application of some holy water laced with lavendar. She traced the pentacle on her forehead, bracketed it with moons. The vial went back into her bag and she reache dinto her desk for the woad paint. "Might as well," she muttered. "I've got to be crazy to go in there." The dark blue dye traced quickly over her hands in patterns of protection, down over the wrists. Then she traced around her neck, then around her solar plexus and abdomen. Besides the ritual purposes, it was practical as well; woad placed near where the blood ran close to the surface meant the psychoactive effects took hold that much quicker. She closed her eyes, sank into meditation for the fifteen minutes it would take the war paint to dry. Then she pulled on her jeans, a black turtleneck, and grabbed her bag.   
  
"Okay. I'm off, call the other two and tell them to meet me at the house... tell them to come fully armed and loaded for demon. Or whatever else is going to be there!"  
  
The cat yowled, hiding in her closet again. She flipped it the rude finger and ducked out her doorway, already feeling the exhilirating effects of the blue woad paint.  
  
"Gonna kick some ass tonight!" 


	2. One

Meredith landed neatly on the balls of her feet, fingertips brushing the floor, looking up and around warily for anything that might be dangerous and in the vicinity. It had been a good several months since she'd last broken into a place and stalked around it like a commando, but she still remembered most of the old tricks. And she'd had good teachers, too.   
  
Once inside, she took a few moments to marvel at the amount of effort and patience that had gone into the making of the house/machine. She hadn't even seen the zodiac room and already she was impressed. The walls had to be made of some sort of thick, shatter-proof glass, probably the kind of glass that resisted incredible amounts of force. In addition to that, they had been written upon with what she deciphered as a Latin warding spell, a protection against... most likely the spirits he would use to power the Eye. Meredith shivered, reminded of what she had come here to do.  
  
She could feel the spirits moving all around her. Some of the pain and rage inside them made her want to be sick; others she could more easily shut out as noisy and forceful wind against the glass of a particularly rickety house. It didn't matter anyway; she'd been doing this for so long she'd almost forgotten what it was like to be normal.  
  
The library, or the zodiac room, or his sanctum sanctorium had to be around here somewhere. She tiptoed through the halls with the greatest of care, half aware that she could be trapped anywhere at any given moment. The whole house must have been constructed to be modular, almost like a computer game.  
  
Well, at least she was good at those kinds of games.  
  
Raised voices. She could hear raised voices, could even track where they were coming from, for the most part. She followed the sound.  
  
"... ALL YOUR FAULT!" she heard, and winced. She knew that voice.  
  
More angry voices. Meredith slipped one hand behind her back, under her short leather jacket, and to the hilt of her knife. Just in case.  
  
"You know, of all the people I expected to see here, I can't imagine why I didn't think of you."  
  
Everyone stared at her. The young man who had been to the shop was there, looking sweaty and panic-stricken and about to fly apart at any given moment. There was another man, who looked much the same, only twenty to thirty years older. There was a woman, somewhere between the two ages. And SHE was there, too.   
  
"YOU!"  
  
"Of course," Meredith said calmly, not letting go of the knife. "What did you expect?"  
  
"Who?" said the older man.  
  
"What?" said the other woman.  
  
"Whaaa..." said the young man, and promptly curled up into a ball in the corner. She remembered that he was a psychic of some kind, and winced. This house had to be sheer hell on him.  
  
"You're not supposed to be here..." she actually looked nervous.  
  
"Of course I'm supposed to be here, Kalina," Meredith narrowed her eyes... was there something else going on with her? "You know that. There's demon-summoning and goddess knows what else going on, and the world's not ready for that kind of thing. So we have to clean up the mess."   
  
Kalina blanched slightly. Just a twinge, but Meredith caught it. Whatever was going on, the other girl knew more than she was telling. And if the last circumstances of their meeting were anything to go by, she was probably involved. "Right. Well, I told them about the Ocularis... and the ghosts and everything. We were working on a way to stop it..."  
  
Meredith shrugged. "Simple enough. Destroy the machine."  
  
A look of panic crossed Kalina's face.  
  
"No... that won't stop the process, it'll be stuck, the doorway half open..." the words tumbled over each other like water falling. Meredith wished Laurel or Amber would get there... it would be nice to have someone who wasn't panicking to talk to. It was making her start to go a little crazy herself.  
  
"It might, but chances are that it won't. These sorts of things, left unpowered, will fade and die on their own. And then we have to destroy all copies of the instructions..."  
  
Kalina opened her mouth and closed it several times, then nodded tightly. "I'll go search the house."  
  
She left. Meredith relaxed only when she couldn't hear the other woman's footsteps anymore, and took her hand off of her knife. No one seemed to notice. Meredith muttered something in French before pulling a thermos out of her duffel bag and taking a long swig straight from the bottle.  
  
"Well, that was tense. Anyone want some hot... well, lukewarm tea?"  
  
They all stared at her as if she'd gone insane.  
  
"Tea. Chamomile. Does anyone want some? We have a little time before someone starts trying to activate the machine."  
  
"Does it have alcohol in it?" the psychic spoke up. She racked her brain trying to remember his name.  
  
"No. You don't get alcohol, you look like you're in a bad enough state without it. If you get inebriated you won't be able to control your powers, and I don't think I have to tell you what THAT will get you in a place like this," Meredith glared, and he blanched, probably at the thought of being drunk in this house of horrors. She tossed him the thermos. "Just drink the tea, it's soothing enough without anything else."  
  
"Who are you, again?" the older man said, seeming to try and reconcile everything that had happened tonight. She figured him for a mundane, someone who had never seen or heard anything out of the ordinary till tonight.   
  
"Sorry... my name's Meredith Kane. I ... well, I don't exactly do this for a living, he..." she gestured at the young man, feeling awkward.  
  
"Dennis..." He was holding the thermos up between his hands and knees, but at least he was looking calmer. "Dennis Rafkin."  
  
"Dennis... visited me at work today... actually it's because of him that I'm here. I read tarot cards for a living, and they suggested that ... something particularly dire was going to happen."  
  
Dennis nodded wordlessly and sunk even lower, a look of abject misery on his face. Meredith winced inside. He must have seen something too, she thought. Probably worse than what she had, because his visions would be ones unadulterated by the tarot cards or tea leaves, or whatever.  
  
"You read... and you saw something was going to happen, so ... how did you know to come here?"   
  
She shrugged. "I knew Cyrus... a little, anyway. A lot more by reputation. He wasn't exactly the most savory of sorcerers, and we always figured that if something was going to happen in this area, it was going to come from him. Unfortunately, I guess we were right?"  
  
"We?"  
  
"Oh... my friends... well, my two sisters.... kind of sisters... umm... coven-mates, I guess you'd call us. And me."  
  
The woman stared at Meredith with eyes gone wide, almost bugging completely out of her head. "Coven... did you say coven?"  
  
She couldn't help it. She put on the most disingenuous, innocent look she could muster. "Of course. Didn't I mention? We're witches."  
  
Dennis just groaned and covered his face with his hands.  
  
  
  
  
  
Elsewhere in the house, Amber made an entrance not so quiet as Meredith's. She'd had to scramble fast, climbing up the walls and taking advantage of an opening between the steel panels before it snapped shut. She didn't have the luxury of making an easy landing, and ended up falling hard on her side. Amber bit her lip and tried not to black out. She lay there for a while, breathing slowly and evenly, making sure her body had not taken too much damage and concentrating to heal the bruises and torn muscles she could sense were there. One of the advantages to being a witch, she thought ruefully, was that you could heal just about any kind of wound... with a little divine help. After several long minutes she pushed herself slowly to her feet. Hopefully Merry would have better luck, wherever she had gotten in. At least she had gotten a head start.  
  
The gun in the small of her back made her freeze and hold her hands up in the universal gesture of 'don't hurt me.' "Hello?" she ventured, trying to keep her voice from quavering.  
  
"With one of you already here, I figured the rest of you wouldn't be far behind..." a familiar, loathed voice came floating over her shoulder. Amber squinched her eyes shut.  
  
This was going to suck. 


	3. Two

Meredith paced up and down the tiny room. It couldn't have been his real library, she decided. For one thing, it wasn't nearly big enough. And it didn't hold nearly enough books of value, even assuming the only thing Kriticos had wanted to know anything about was the Ocularis. Oh well. It would have to do for now, and anyway, that was what all those damn years of study had been for. Reading all that damn Gardener and Buckland and everything had to be good for something.   
  
"Shouldn't we be doing something?" the older man, Arthur Kriticos (who had turned out to be Cyrus's nephew, now there was something!) wanted to know. He was impatient, which Meredith could fully sympathize with... he was probably worried half to death about his kids.   
  
"Not necessarily. We have a little time before Cyrus gets too impatient to be safe. I don't think he has all the things he needs, yet, or he would have done this before now."  
  
Arthur blinked, and nodded slowly. "Okay, that makes sense. But what does he need?"  
  
"Shouldn't we..." Maggie looked at Arthur nervously. He looked down at the floor, a bit sheepish and ashamed. ... Ashamed of what?  
  
"Shouldn't we...?" Meredith tilted her head to one side inquisitively. "What?"  
  
"Kalina said something about a thirteenth ghost..." Dennis mumbled from where he was still curled up against the wall.   
  
Meredith looked around between each of three of them. "A thirteenth ghost?"  
  
Maggie nodded emphatically. "She called it... like, a failsafe, a way to turn off the machine."  
  
Meredith frowned. "I suppose it's possible. A zodiac has twelve, twelve for the twelve months usually, or twelve moons if you want to get technical... twelve spokes on the wheel, twelve signs in the zodiac, a paradigm of magical numbers, fours and threes... but if you want to get technical there's thirteen moons in a year, roughly... and I suppose the thirteenth ghost could be that extra moon, sort of like ... but that wouldn't... at least it probably wouldn't act like a failsafe... more like an activation key..." she looked up, realizing at the last second that she'd been talking to herself. "What did she say this thirteenth ghost had to be? What kind of zodiac sign?"  
  
Arthur looked puzzled. "She said it had to be... a sacrifice of pure love."  
  
Meredith narrowed her eyes. Now she knew Kalina was up to something bad. "And you believed her? Look. Don't you find it just a little fishy that Cyrus dies... and he's not actually dead, by the way." They all stared at her in shock. She waved it away. "Don't ask, magical woo-woo. Cyrus dies, leaves you this big creepy mysterious house that turns out to be the key of ultimate power. Only we knew... you had to know... that Cyrus wasn't the kind of person to give up any kind of power to anyone. He'd be more likely to have left instructions to destroy it upon his death, or some kind of dead man's switch that rigged the house to blow up. Barring all that, he sends a lawyer to bring you here, then your kids suddenly disappear in the creepy old house. Which, granted, doesn't sound suspicious, but when you consider it as incentive to get you to ..." she trailed off.  
  
Maggie and Dennis were staring at her in shock, but Arthur was nodding as though it made sense. "And you figured it all out now?" Dennis asked. Hysteria was laced all through his voice, and it occured to Meredith that they'd have to either calm him down or sedate him before they did much of anything.  
  
"Actually, no..." she admitted. "It's the kind of thing he's done before. Manipulated people into doing what he wanted for the reasons he needed. He's a pretty smart kind of a bastard. I suppose Kalina also told you that the glasses enabled you to see the ghosts."  
  
Everyone nodded. "But... they do," Maggie said patiently. "That's how we got away from them all."  
  
"Yes..." Meredith said, just as patiently. "But doesn't it strike you as odd that the ghosts didn't hurt you until you put the glasses on?"  
  
Everyone opened their mouths to offer some sort of explanation... and then stopped. And thought about it. She saw comprehension flash across Dennis's face just before a look of pure horror, and then he tore the glasses off his face and flung them across the room. They shattered against the glass warding wall.  
  
"The glasses help you to see the spirit world by bringing you into it, a little way. It's like not being able to see clearly under water until you stick your head into it." She picked up the shards of the glasses. "It's actually kind of interesting, the different spell strings he layered onto it. There's the standard sort of imposition of clairvoyance, but there's also a little transformation... mortal to spectral... and a little bit of transference in there... or maybe that's the mortal to spectral part, and then the transformation would be from mortal to para-mortal, or even supra-mortal... the concatenation is remarkable..."   
  
"Concate-WHAT?" Maggie stared. "And what's that in English?"  
  
"Oh. Umm.. a concatenation is a series of strings... they use the term in internet code as well... oh, never mind..." she slumped down against the wall and looked up against the ceiling, trying to think of what she could do by herself. "Honestly, I hope my friends get here soon. Cyrus... I could probably take him down if I had a choice of where I did it, and when, and how... but not on his own turf like this. Hell, I wouldn't have come here tonight if I hadn't been chased into it."  
  
"Chased into it?" Arthur stared at her. "Chased by who? You still haven't explained how you knew we were here, or what was going on." Now he was starting to look at her suspiciously. Which she couldn't really blame him for.  
  
"Oh, me? Oh, that's easy. My Goddess chased me here." She flipped a rude gesture in the general direction of the sky. "When the Goddess calls, Her priestesses answer. It's a kind of annoying life, but you learn to live with it."  
  
"Your Goddess?" Maggie looked at her like she'd grown horns.  
  
"Sure. Oh, don't give me that look. You know how Christian priests always say they have a calling and such-like? Well, so do we. Only... a bit more direct. Sort of the difference between a subtle hint and a slap upside the head." Meredith sighed. "We all volunteer for it, it's not a conscripted army. But once you consign your soul to the Goddess... that's it. Priestess doesn't mean 'special' or 'revered', it means service to the community in whatever way you can." She thought about it for a second. "Actually, it's kind of Marxist."  
  
Arthur kindly didn't say what he thought of THAT comment.  
  
"But that's neither here, nor there." She stood up abruptly. "And besides, I think I've come up with a plan."  
  
Arthur sighed. It seemed as though he was giving up all hope, or at least all hope that he had any idea of what the hell was going on. Which was both a good thing and a bad thing. Oh well... she'd deal with it later. "What's your plan?"  
  
Meredith took a deep breath. "We get out of here. I lead you.. actually, I lead Dennis, and you guys follow me... don't wear the glasses, I'll steer you around the ghosts and if you're not wearing the glasses they can't do more than haunt you anyway. They may try to talk to you, but don't listen to them. Only listen to me, or each other." She shouldered her duffel bag again, and gently pried her thermos out of Dennis's hands. He stood up reluctantly, still pale and shaking a little. "We head towards either the front door or the roof, where, if I'm not mistaken, Laurel and Amber will be waiting for us. And hopefully I can call in some bigger powers as well." She stuffed the thermos back into her bag.  
  
"And then?"  
  
"And then we go in kicking ass..."  
  
  
  
  
  
Amber took several deep breaths, trying to think as if each of her next few seconds of life might be her last, trying to make her last few seconds of life count. At least if she went down, Merry was probably already in and could do something to stop this, and Laurel wouldn't be far behind. And if there was a problem there was always Merry's father, and Laurel's cousins, and who knew what else. Merry had almost certainly left a note for her father. And he always seemed to know when the three of them were in trouble, anyway. Granted, this had led to some embarrassing moments in the past... Amber smiled with the memory, and felt the gun barrel dig further into her ribs.   
  
"What are you smiling at, bitch?" Kalina wanted to know.  
  
"Witch. It's WITCH. Get it right." Even her bravado was tempered now, though. She'd always been the most outspoken of the three, but with the gun barrel this close to her body, magic or no magic, priestess or no priestess, she was going to die.   
  
"Whatever. You three are up to something, sneaking around here, and I want to know what it is."  
  
Amber almost laughed at the idiodicy of that statement. "We've come to stop the Eye from opening and destroying the entire world, of course. What else did you think we came here for, fun and entertainment? That's what movie theatres are for."  
  
"Well, you can't," Kalina said, with the sort of triumphant finality that gave Amber cold chills and told her exactly what side the other woman was on. "All the ghosts are in place except the last one, and he'll be ready as soon as I get back to him... or as soon as Cyrus does."   
  
Amber frowned. There was a tremor in her voice at the mention of the old sorcerer. Which meant that though Kalina might be allied with him, even maybe as his apprentice, she knew at least some of what he was capable of. She'd never understand why people chose to study under those kinds of psychos... she'd've taken Crowley before she took Cyrus as her teacher. At least Crowley didn't have the kind of maniacal singlemindedness it took to sacrifice one's own students for... whatever.  
  
"Him?" she latched onto whatever she could find to talk about, anything to keep Kalina from shooting her.   
  
"Arthur... Cyrus's nephew, although I don't think I've seen a more boring and stupid man in a long time." Which probably meant that Arthur was nice, very unschooled in anything remotely magical, and ordinary. "He's going to sacrifice himself for his kids, and then ..." There was a dramatic pause. Amber nearly groaned out loud. "The Eye will open."  
  
Kalina should have found an acting teacher, Amber thought sourly. She was melodramatic enough for it... "What makes you think he'll sacrifice himself for them?"  
  
"Cyrus has them." Kalina shrugged. Amber felt the gun barrel move just a little, and held her breath. "If Arthur doesn't kill himself in the wheels of the machine, he'll kill the brats. Simple. Right after I deal with you and Meredith Kane."  
  
So Merry WAS inside the building. Amber thought about taking a few risks, but didn't say anything. "And how are you going to do that?"   
  
"I'll figure something out. Maybe I'll just shoot you both. After I find her again..." Kalina made a vexed noise. "I think she's left the library."  
  
Amber, given the way the conversation was going, let her mind wander briefly away. If Merry was in the house, she could find her, and probably fairly easily too...  
  
amber! you are here. thank the goddess...  
  
here, but can't talk long. kalina has a gun on me.  
  
....  
  
"Come on..." Kalina got impatient and prodded Amber forward with the gun. "Let's go through the halls to the main entrance. They're probably waiting for the rest of your stupid, nosy group."   
  
we're going to the main entrance. she wants to shoot us all so we can't interfere  
  
i thought something was wrong. i left a note for father, but...  
  
yeah. for all we know he could be out. laurel knows, she should be coming. be careful, merry.  
  
you be careful too. you're the one with the gun pointed at you  
  
Amber winced and started walking forward as Kalina prodded more insistantly. She wondered just how tight the safety was on that thing, how stiff the trigger was. If it wasn't stiff at all, if it was easy to pull, a startled movement could get her shot. This wasn't going well at all. She only hoped Laurel was having better luck.  
  
  
  
  
Cyrus stared at the rather familiar looking young woman with a curious look and a mad, dangerous glint just lurking behind his eyes. Laurel stood frozen, as though staring at a snake about to strike. Her heart was trip-hammering in her chest.  
  
"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" 


	4. Three

Laurel tried to stay very still, tried not to panic. Of all the things that could have happened, getting captured by Cyrus hadn't been on her list of likely possibilities. Scuttlebut had said he was dead! And for once, she had believed the official word and ignored the rumor mill. They'd all been wary, of course, but they'd all figured he was dead, despite the fact that everyone knew he was working on something nasty. But now, seeing him standing in front of her... alive and well and just as evil as ever... it was very disheartening. And not a little bit scary.  
  
"I thought you were dead," she said finally, her voice coming out much steadier than she would have thought it would.  
  
"A popular misconception," he sneered, stepping forward. It took all of her nerve and will not to scurry back as far away from him as she could. "It was what I wanted you to think. It allowed me to finish my work undisturbed by you meddlers and dabblers."  
  
"The Ocularis."  
  
"Precisely. I had thought to use Arthur for the final activation key, but it seems I now have several choices, since you and your friends decided to interfere. What is it that you pathetic dishrags say?"  
  
Laurel knew exactly what he was talking about. "In perfect love and perfect trust..." she whispered, going pale. Oh Goddess... if all three of them were here and under his control...  
  
"Exactly. Such a sacrifice should satisfy the needs of the Ocularis quite nicely."  
  
Stall him. She had to stall him. This was above their capabilities... they were so far in over their heads they were practically drowning. They had to get ahold of Meredith's father, somehow. Or better yet, her cousins, twins Anna and Jenna... someone else. Someone with more power and more skill than the three of them. Meredith's father would be wondering where they were soon anyway, if Meredith wasn't in her bed or at least wandering around her house in the evening... she had to stall Cyrus. But how... "How did you do it?" she found herself asking. "The design plans to the machine have been lost for centuries."  
  
Cyrus actually tittered. "My dear girl, nothing is lost to he who has the patience and persistance to succeed. They weren't lost, you simply didn't know where to look."  
  
She swallowed. "And you managed to translate it...?"  
  
"It wasn't difficult. The languages were all either older variations on a modern dialect, or an ancient language which survived to this day. The pronunciation was a bit difficult, I grant, but in the end it was simply a matter of time." He seemed to respond well to flattery and invitations to boast of his achievements.   
  
"And the ghosts? How did you find...?"  
  
He practically brayed with laughter. "Oh, that was the simplest part. A simple young psychic man helped with that, I dare say, a little... he was so pathetically eager to find someone who understood his problems and his visions, someone who didn't treat him like the freak he so obviously was, that he would do whatever I asked him. The boy had visions, of the past, of the future, and he could even see into the spirit world. That, I must say, was useful."  
  
Laurel frowned. He sounded like a pure psychic, and a pure psychic was about as common as a male tortiseshell cat. Most psychic powers (or as Amber was fond of calling them, psychotic powers) came from either hermetic ritual, religious practice and belief, or shamanic practices. Pure psychics in this day and age, the age of skepticism and science, were very rare indeed. "You used him."  
  
"Of course." Kriticos sounded almost derisive of her disapproval. "He was a tool, and most willing to be used, I might add. Spare no pity for him. It would be better spent on yourself."  
  
She did indeed pity him; if he was a pure psychic, his life must have been a living hell until he had met Kriticos. The other reason pure psychics were very rare was because most of them went insane and either died or spent the remainder of their life in an institution. For this man to have managed to maintain some relatively normal quality of life was nothing short of remarkable.   
  
But that was another problem; right now she had to get away from Kriticos. And, given how the house was starting to move and tremble and preparing to regurgitate another ghost, she thought she had an idea. "You're a manipulative, sociopathic bastard, Cyrus..." she said finally. "And I will not be a party to whatever plans you have to drag this whole world down to hell with you."   
  
She jumped.   
  
Cyrus took a step forward almost involuntarily, startled. Somehow, she managed to gain a fingerhold on the top of the sliding walls, which were shifting and moving till the spells on them formed a different configuration. The one she had leaped onto was sliding upwards and into the ceiling, and she clung onto it as far up as she could possibly go, then leaped to another one. Riding them like a monkey, she jumped from wall to wall, hallway to hallway, till she was finally forced to drop to the floor. By then she could barely see Cyrus Kriticos, three hallways away... but the walls were still moving. One of them was threatening to close on her. She darted sideways, skipping out from between it just in time. It caught a corner of her skirt it closed, but nothing else. That seemed to be the last of them.  
  
Laurel closed her eyes and breathed a silent prayer of thanks to her Goddess. She was safe, at least for the time being. In a few minutes, once she had gotten her breath back, she could start moving again, trying to find the others and anyone else who might be in this hellish dungeon. In a few minutes, once she could concentrate. And breathe.   
  
  
  
  
  
The cold, clammy hand squeezed Meredith's hand so tightly she thought it might eventually cut off her circulation. It was attatched to an equally cold arm, which was attatched to a very shaky Dennis Rafkin. The somewhat less shaky Arthur Kriticos and Maggie brought up the rear of the unlikely parade.   
  
They had almost been ready to go when the walls had started to move again and, rather than risk trying to decipher all the spell fragments on the walls in an eyeblink, Meredith ("Call me Merry") had suggested that they stay put till it all stopped. Everyone had been more or less enthusiastic about the idea.   
  
Plus it had given her a bit of time to coax Dennis out of his corner. He was most definitely not a happy camper, and more startling he appeared to be genuinely psychic. He didn't know what the vast majority of the symbols in Cyrus Kriticos's lair meant, much less what any of the more common hermetic symbols were. Meredith would have loved to have had the time to talk with him some more, but as it was they didn't have much time. She had to get him more compos mentis than he was right now, and that meant avoiding such traumatic topics as his powers, what he saw, or how he used them.  
  
She'd knelt on the floor in front of him, taking his hands in hers and squeezing them gently. "Dennis..." He'd had his eyes shut tight. "Dennis. We need to go soon."  
  
"Okay... but I'll just stay here, okay?" he'd squeaked, opening one eye and rolling it like a frightened horse.   
  
"You can't stay here," she'd said reasonably, "I can't protect you if you stay here. I need you to stay with the rest of the group... if we find Laurel or Amber, they can take you back here and stay with you while we take care of it..."  
  
"No, no, no... no... if I go out there, I'm as good as dead. Count on it."  
  
Meredith opened her mouth to refute it, then stopped, remembering his abilities. "You saw something?"  
  
He'd nodded wordlessly. He'd looked (he still looked) like he was about to cry. "Saw it all. The big hammer dude. Smashed me against a wall." Through their linked hands she'd gotten a glimpse of what he must have seen. It wasn't pretty.   
  
"Well, look, Dennis..." she'd said, wondering if she could really say this. "I won't let anything happen to you in here, okay? I promise."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"In the Goddess's name."  
  
Pause. "Okay."  
  
Dear Goddess, she thought now as she led the motley crew through the maze that was Cyrus Kriticos' home. Please don't let me fail them. Please don't let me get Dennis killed. She thought back to what she'd seen through Dennis' visions... smashed against a wall, back broken by the hammer and by the sheer force of being bent in two. It wasn't pretty. Unlike Dennis, she had the small advantage of knowing that the future wasn't written, that it could be changed. Unfortunately, she also knew that the closer a vision was, the less chance you had of changing it. The sheer weight of temporal inertia would be stronger and stronger closer to the event itself. Unless they stayed in here for days (and she wasn't liking that prospect at all) her chances of actually keeping Dennis alive were slim.   
  
To hell with chances, she thought. I'm damn well going to do it. We'll all get out of here alive. Except Cyrus. He needs to die. And maybe Kalina, too. She squeezed Dennis' hand gently, trying to be reassuring. "Don't worry," she called back down the line. "We'll make it out of here." She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.  
  
"Who's worried," Dennis muttered. But at least he was sounding better.   
  
Meredith led them around the Angry Princess, making the sign of the blessing of the Goddess (which seemed to confuse the ghost), wondering where her friends were. Wondering if her father had noticed her absence yet. Wondering if anyone would get there in time. 


	5. Four

Amber walked through what felt like miles and miles of hallway, all of it inscribed with some of the most complex warding spells she'd ever seen. The barrel of the gun pressed into her back, a constant reminder of what would happen if she so much as put one foot wrong. All around her she could hear, sometimes see, the ghosts and spirits that made up this manifestation of the Black Zodiac. Well, one Black Zodiac anyway. They flickered on the edge of her vision like a nagging itch she couldn't reach, not threatening, merely irritating. At least for now. Behind her the annoying, whiny voice of Kalina muttered imprecations and reminders to herself as she tried to thread her way through the maze of glass and spellcraft.   
  
She had never been so pissed off in her life.  
  
She could feel Meredith in the back of her mind, feel her calmly leading her odd procession through the hallways as well. She could also feel Laurel, panicked almost out of her mind for some reason. Amber wasn't sure she wanted to know what was going on, and was very sure she didn't want to interrupt Laurel while she worked her way out of whatever situation she was in. For all Amber knew, Laurel had a gun pressed to the middle of her back as well. The last thing she would want was a voice in her head.  
  
In the meantime, Amber had her own problems to worry about. Kalina was being thoroughly obnoxious, even aside from the gun. She was worrying to herself, muttering about her crazy boss. Amber was about ready to deck her at the next given opportunity, gun or no gun. This was just intolerable.  
  
Finally she just turned around. "You know, if you're going to put a gun to someone's back, the least you could do is shut up while you coerce them into doing... whatever."  
  
Kalina blinked at her. Then she proceeded to wave the gun. "Excuse me? Who has the gun around here? Is it you, witchy-girl? I don't think so. It's me. So shut the hell up, turn around, and keep walking."  
  
Amber sighed, but did as she was told. "You're probably going around in circles anyway," she muttered.  
  
"I am n... look, I helped build this place, okay?" Amber didn't believe that for a New York minute. Kalina might have been there, but she probably wasn't of any help whatsoever. "I know my way around here, dammit."   
  
"Sure you do." Amber let the scorn she felt drip from her words. As much as it was taught that to feel so negatively about someone hurt herself as much as the other person... Kalina was just a pretentious idiot. She wanted the power, she wanted abilities that sorcery would give her... but she didn't have the patience or ability to concentrate or any of the temperment traits needed to be any kind of magicker. Even supposing she knew half as much as she said she did about the Ocularis... she was upset enough that it didn't matter, all her hard-earned knowledge was flying right out of her head. It just wouldn't work. And it galled Amber that such a person had a gun pressed to the middle of her back.  
  
"I damn well do. I had to memorize the plans enough times..." Kalina sounded irritated. Amber tried to relax, and felt a moment of pity for the girl. It wasn't, she supposed, her fault that Cyrus was such a bastard of a teacher, not to mention a sociopathic demonologist of a sorcerer. "Look. I know exactly where were going, so why don't you just shut up and enjoy the walk there. Because believe me, you're not going to enjoy it when we get to where we're going. He's going to want to talk to you, and it's not going to be nice."   
  
Amber saw the glass door sliding only a fraction of a second before it started to close. She dived in front of it, skidding to one side and praying to her Goddess as fast as she could that the glass could stop bullets. "Bye!"  
  
"HEY!" she heard, muffled through the glass. Kalina started to run forwards, but stopped as she realized she'd never get through in time. Amber had a few seconds of a reprieve while Kalina backed up and took aim, and then she fired several bullets into the glass. Amber ducked.   
  
"Shit!" she started to scurry away. "Kalina, you stupid bitch! You keep doing that, and the glass will break, and who knows what kinds of hell will break loose..." Not, she realized belatedly, that Kalina could hear her over the gun and through the glass. She skittered away, diving between doors and putting as many sliding glass panels as she could between herself and the crazy woman with the gun. Behind her, she could hear the gun fire over and over until she thought it must have clicked empty in the chamber. Kalina must have had only the one clip.  
  
Once she had gotten clear of the broken glass, once she had time to breathe, she slunk down against a wall and ducked her head, closing her eyes. She murmured a silent and fervent thanks to her Goddess, calming her rapid breathing and her racing mind. And then she stood, put one hand to the glass, and started walking... looking for her friends... trying not to get killed.   
  
She felt very, very much alone.  
  
  
  
  
  
Meredith clutched Dennis' hand tightly as she stood stock still, waiting for the next gunshot. She'd been keeping half a third eye on her coven-sisters ever since detecting Laurel's presence... and what she was sensing was definitely not good. Laurel ... something had scared her, and badly. From what Meredith could guess, she'd run into Cyrus himself. She knew that Amber had found Kalina, and was being chased around the house by the crazy girl who evidently decided that the glass and magic house was the perfect place to get her gun off. Privately, Meredith was wondering what she was doing with a gun in the first place, and praying wryly that Amber didn't get 'hold of it. The last thing Amber needed was a gun. Between the two of them, and guiding the other three through and around the ghosts, Meredith's nerves were rapidly fraying.   
  
"What?" To his credit, Dennis didn't yelp this time. He had when the first shot had rung out in Meredith's mind, causing her to leap into the air and come down fighting. This time, he seemed to almost expect it.  
  
"I'm not sure. I think the shooting's over. I think that was the last shot she had in the gun. Put your hand down the back of my pants..."  
  
"WHAT?" That exclamation echoed down the line of people.  
  
"Oh, stop that. There's a knife... two, actually... in a belt sheath in the back of my jeans. Behind the waistband. Get them out. You might need them."  
  
"Oh..." Dennis took a deep breath and reached out, slowly pulling the small stilettos from behind her. He seemed almost afraid to touch her skin, not that she could blame him. She kept very still, in body and in mind, trying not to trigger any more visions than absolutely necessary. It seemed to work.  
  
Meredith nodded. "Pass one to Arthur... Maggie, I'm afraid you're going to have to do without for a bit... till we can find some place where I can get the rest of these out. Some of them are in places that are hard to get to unless I flash the hall. For now..." she reached back for Dennis' hand again, which slid hesitantly into hers. He was, she thought with some surprise, not unlike a little boy who had been frightened out of his wits by something in a dark room, and was now seeking reassurance from anyone who looked likely. She stroked her thumb over the back of his hand, trying to be comforting.   
  
The next thing she did was to pull a sixteen inch knife from beneath her hair and down her back. She did it carefully, so as not to cut the man behind her, but even so everyone yelped again. "What the hell is that?" Dennis screeched, "A sword?"  
  
"Too short..." she said calmly, squeezing his hand again, reassuringly. "It's just a really big knife. All the weapons have been blessed and consecrated to a fair-thee-well, though, so they might come in handy. Come on... we've got to find the others..."   
  
The silly-looking parade resumed.  
  
"Meredith?" Dennis asked quietly after a few more minutes. She wasn't sure if she liked the quiet tone of his voice... it seemed like he was trying not to talk too loudly, trying to keep from alarming the people behind them.  
  
"Merry," she corrected him absently. "What is it?"  
  
He took a deep breath. Whatever the question was, he didn't think he was going to like the answer. "Do you really think we're going to get out of this place?"  
  
She'd actually been wondering that herself, ever since she'd sensed both of her coven-sisters trapped and cornered by the sorcerer and his apprentice. She was, not that she'd show it to the other three, terrified that they wouldn't get out. She wanted her father with her, or her aunt, and she desperately wanted to be reunited with the other two. She felt very much out of her depth, out of her league, and outmatched. But she wasn't about to show that to any of the other three. They had enough to deal with as it was. And she'd had a long time to practice her professional face, keeping a blank wall between her fear and her expression, not letting it show. If not to keep from alarming the people she was helping, then there were certainly enough people and creatures in this world and several others that would attack at the first sign of fear. She had the scars to remind her.  
  
But the question still needed an honest answer. "I don't know..." she said candidly. "But I think it's likely. No matter how scary the ghosts are, no matter how much he powers up the machine, he still can't open it until he has the activation key, the thirteenth ghost. And the ghosts themselves... there are ways around them. Cyrus... I'm pretty sure he's still alive, and he's probably somewhere in this house." This part she had to be careful with, preparing them in case they actually met Cyrus... "But if we run into him, I can deal with him too."  
  
She winced, even as Dennis pulled back and gave her a very direct look (the first look he'd given her that wasn't laced with fear, she realized). "Are you sure?" he asked, doubtful. "Cyrus is really powerful... and really, really nasty. Are you really sure you can take him on?"  
  
"No," came a voice from down the hall. "But we can." 


	6. Five

Sebastian Kane knew from the moment he stepped into the house that Meredith wasn't home. It didn't surprise him too much. She was in the habit of going out with her friends till late at night, often hanging out in bars or at the cinema, talking and laughing over matters both mundane and magical. While he might have preferred that she turn more attention to her studies, he acknowledged that it was good for her to be young while she still could.  
  
Except that this didn't feel like one of those times when she was out at a bar too late. It didn't feel like she had gone out with her friends for some fun and games. For one thing, there wasn't a note on the table like there usually was, not even a sigul or a rune inscribed in the air to indicate that she'd gone out drinking or dancing. There wasn't any sign of her presence in the house, and the only indication he had that she'd actually come home from work was that her working clothes were in their bag, dropped in a corner of the foyer.  
  
Curious.  
  
Normally, he didn't go into her room when she wasn't there. He respected her right to privacy, and acknowledged her need for some space. But this ... this didn't feel right. He pushed open the door... it hadn't even been closed.   
  
The kitten that had found her landed on his arm as soon as he entered, yowling. He shouted, flinging his arm up and the cat halfway across the room before he'd realized that it wasn't some creature attacking him. They stood at opposite ends, glaring at each other.  
  
"I suppose you know what's happened to her," he grumped. The cat only licked its nose and looked impertinent.   
  
"Well?" he asked after a few minutes. The kitten threw one leg over its shoulder and began to wash.  
  
"Look, cat," he said finally, rapping his walking stick on the side of the door to get its attention. "I don't have time or patience or inclination for this. My daughter is missing, and you more than likely know where she is. You wouldn't have come near me if she wasn't in trouble. So why don't you just tell me where she is, and we don't have to speak to each other again." Sebastian Kane hated witch's cats. In Meredith's cat's case, the feeling was mutual.  
  
The kitten took a few more seconds to wash, during which Sebastian tapped his stick on the side of the door impatiently. Finally he leaped down from the windowsill and trotted over to the desk, pulling down a newspaper with an awkward looking leap. He paged through it with a paw until he got to the section he wanted, and then he ...   
  
Sebastian blinked.   
  
The cat had defecated on an obituary.  
  
Well, he thought to himself. That's certainly an indication of some feeling. He winced, putting a handkerchief to his nose, moved the cat more delicately than he might have otherwise, and took a look at the obituary.   
  
Cyrus Kriticos.  
  
Sebastian snorted. He knew the man wasn't dead... knew it for a fact, even, because he had caught Cyrus crashing his own funeral. It was the worst kind of hubris to do so... Magicians and sorcerers faked their own deaths all the time; even the illustrious Swann had staged one of the most elaborate productions ever, and then promptly been skewered on his own swords in the middle of it. Privately, Sebastian thought it was particularly cruel to do so with his wife in the audience. But only the most egotistical of magicians actually attended their own funerals and wakes. It just... wasn't done.  
  
But... what was Meredith doing with Cyrus Kriticos?   
  
The cat yowled, running around in tight little circles. Sebastian interpreted this (correctly) as a sign of urgency, and gave the room a cursory examination. "I understand, cat," he muttered impatiently as he looked to see what was out of place. And then he caught sight of it, the closet door open, the duffel bag she usually kept packed for emergencies mundane and magical, gone.   
  
There had been a rumor going around some years back. Kriticos had .. done something. He had been having a house constructed, to bizarre specifications as most magic-practitioners houses were when they had the chance. But this one had been more bizarre than usual... Meredith usually kept more organized notes on that sort of thing, on the box Sebastian usually shrank from. Let his daughter be preoccupied with the computer age. He would stick to writing letters. "Cat..." he said slowly. "Can you use that... thing?"  
  
The cat snorted, gave a sort of habitual scratch as though trying to pile invisible dirt over the feces, and leaped up onto the desk. It batted the mouse around until the screen lit up again, and then proceeded to... well, play with the mouse. A few seconds later, and a picture of Kriticos's house was on the screen... and then Sebastian realized with horror what had been nagging at his mind.  
  
"That stupid girl..." he murmured, aghast. "She's gone to ... oh, Kriticos, if you aren't dead by the time I get there, I will see your soul fed to the Ocularis..." He stepped neatly over the cat's half-hearted attempt to trip him and stormed out the door, grabbing coat and cane on the way out.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Dennis screamed.  
  
Which sent Maggie screaming, which sent Arthur yelping (though to his credit he didn't actually scream). Everyone was screeching. It took Meredith and Laurel several minutes to calm everyone down.  
  
"I've never been so glad to see anyone in my life..." Laurel hugged Meredith tightly.  
  
"Where have you been?" Meredith asked finally. "I thought Cyrus had gotten you..."   
  
"He very nearly did..." her eyes were wide and frightened, even now. "But one drawback to having a house that moves around as much as this one is that you can lose just about anyone in it. I managed to get a few panels away ... although it took a while before he stopped chasing me."  
  
"Oh, he won't stop chasing you..." Dennis said gloomily, and Laurel glanced at him quizzically. "He'll just wait till you think you've gotten away, and then..."  
  
"Oh..." Meredith remembered... "Guys, this is Laurel... Hon, that's Dennis, Arthur Kriticos, and Maggie..." There were handshakes all around. Laurel and Dennis's eyes locked for a second, recognition flashed in her eyes, and then she looked away. Meredith nodded, but made no other acknowledgement of what had happened.   
  
"Look," Laurel said finally, "There's a bedroom not too far down the hallway... at least, I think it's not too far down, if the doors haven't shifted yet. We might as well go there... that way we don't have to dodge the glass, and we can all talk and have a little bit of a rest. And maybe Amber can catch up with us... have you heard from her?" she turned a worried glance to her coven-sister.  
  
Meredith nodded tensely. "Kalina had her at gunpoint... I don't know whose bright idea it was to give Kalina a gun. I think Amber got away... at least, I heard gunshots and didn't..." Both women paled, but didn't say anything. Maggie and Arthur exchanged a look. Dennis put his hand on a wall and jumped a little, then sighed.  
  
"She's okay," he said unexpectedly, causing everyone to look at him suddenly. He shrugged, a little self-conscious. "I just... She's okay. I don't know where she is, though. At least, I guess that's her, 'cause it's not Kalina."  
  
"Dark blonde hair cut pretty long, probably in a pony-tail, brown eyes, small hands?" Laurel asked quietly. "Probably in jeans and a turtleneck, same as the rest of us?"  
  
Dennis nodded slowly. "And a red vinyl jacket."  
  
Meredith and Laurel exchanged another glance, this time of clear relief. "That's her," Meredith said, smiling. "Thanks, Dennis."   
  
He actually smiled, a bit weakly, but it was a smile. "Hey, glad to be of help. I think."   
  
By mutual agreement, Laurel led the way to the bedroom. It was, as promised, not very far off; it was pretty small, however. The two witches perched on the bed, while Dennis sprawled over a chair and Maggie leaned against the wall. Arthur paced, distracting both witches, but they couldn't really blame him. Laurel and Meredith conversed in low tones, for the most part, discussing the most technical details of magic and what they could do to prevent the Ocularis from opening. No new ghosts had been released, much to everyone's relief, although Dennis cringed from what Arthur and Maggie thought was thin air a couple of times. Both times, the witches looked up and glared at the air, tracing some kind of design. Whatever it was, it made the ghosts leave them alone.  
  
After maybe half an hour the witches seemed to come to a conclusion, and looked around at the rest of the room. Arthur stopped pacing and stared at them expectantly.  
  
"First of all, Arthur..." Laurel began as Meredith stretched back on the opulent bed. "Your children are alive. They aren't even terribly hurt, just scared. They're being kept safe for the time being... their function isn't sacrifice right now, but bait." She said it gently but bluntly, not cushioning the news at all.   
  
Arthur took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Bait... to get me to do what he wants so he can start this.. machine."  
  
Both witches nodded. "It'd probably be best if you went along with us while we're looking for Cyrus. You or Maggie.. you two are the only ones the kids know and trust, and if we show up and tell them it's okay, they may not believe us..." Laurel continued. She didn't say that it would also be best because it would keep Arthur from doing anything bad, out of ignorance or a desire to rescue his children, or whatever noble aim.   
  
"Dennis..." she said then, and he looked up in alarm. "Meredith tells me you're a psychic..."  
  
"Clairvoyant, with trace elements of precognition and multi-planear vision ranging into the spectral..." Meredith supplied, and everyone but Laurel gave her an odd look. Laurel smiled crookedly.   
  
"... is that true?"  
  
Dennis stared at both of them in confusion. "Well, psychic, yeah. I don't know about all that other stuff. I can't go near anything dead without having mind-blowing images that pretty much give me epileptic fits, and I can't touch anyone..." he looked at Meredith, frowned. "Except you... without getting their whole life story in a five second blast with surround-sound and digital quality pictures..."   
  
Laurel nodded slowly. "Meredith volunteered to go lead the others up against Cyrus, and to try to find Bobby and Kathy. She said that you might want to stay here, though, where it's safe..." she paused, grimaced. "SafER, anyway. Do you want to...?" Dennis blinked. "Do you want me to stay with you?" Her voice was gentle, like talking to a small child.   
  
"Look..." said Arthur unexpectedly. Everyone looked over at him, and he shifted uncomfortably, "Dennis. Um... Okay, look. I'm sorry about what Kalina said... what I said before, all right? It's not your fault... Cyrus would have gotten all this built with or without your help. And you didn't do anything to ..." he swallowed a little, barely perceptibly, "Kathy and Bobby. And looking around   
at all this, listening to you people talk... I feel about as out of place as you must feel most of the time. I don't know what half of this stuff means, and frankly, it scares the hell out of me. So..." he ran his fingers nervously through what was left of his hair. "I don't know what I'm trying to say. I guess... I'm sorry for what I said, and thanks for doing what you have to help my family..."  
  
Meredith and Laurel exchanged another secret glance, but didn't say anything.   
  
Dennis took this whole speech in for a few minutes, thought about it, mostly staring at the ground and looking like a frightened rabbit. Then he stood up slowly, visibly pulling himself together... and standing up straighter, squaring his shoulders as though resigning himself to the inevitable. "Hey... I'm sorry, too, man... I mean, if I hadn't helped Cyrus with this machine, maybe someone would have stopped him in time. And, hell, I could have tried harder to stop him, and I didn't. I mean, I was scared out of my mind... the guy's creepier 'n shit... but that's still no excuse. I knew what he was up to, and I should have stopped it." He took a deep breath. "And I'm sorry as hell about what happened with your wife." He looked like he was going to add to it, stopped, reconsidered, and just stuck out his hand gingerly. "Okay?"  
  
Arthur stared at him for a second before shaking his hand, quickly. "Okay." He pulled his hand back as Dennis winced. "Um... sorry... should I have done that...?" Dennis waved him away.   
  
"Like I said.." Meredith said quietly after a second, "You can stay here, Dennis. Laurel or I will stay here with you. You too, Maggie... We could use your help, but no one should go out into that..." she gestured at the wall, behind which (presumably) several very angry ghosts were lurking, "... without being absolutely ready for anything that could happen."  
  
Dennis took a deep breath, but Maggie interrupted him before he could say anything. "Hell, I never let any stupid old white guy intimidate me, and I'm not about to start now," she grinned. Everyone could tell she was putting on a brave front, but Meredith grinned anyway.   
  
"Dennis?"  
  
He took a deep breath. He played with the stiletto knife in his hand for a few minutes, tracing the symbols on the hilt for a minute or so before answering. "You know, up till tonight, I spent most of my life being the ultimate freak, never really getting along with anyone, till Cyrus took me in. And even he... he scared the shit out of me. I did what I had to... I needed the money, I needed the job."  
  
"You needed the friend," Laurel said quietly, and Dennis nodded.  
  
"But you guys... you guys are something else," he continued quietly. "And I really do feel sorry as hell for what I did. So, yeah... I'll come with you guys." He smiled a little, trying to look brave again. "It's better than sitting here waiting for them to come along and freak me out again."  
  
Meredith smiled. She reached over and squeezed his shoulder gently, as Laurel slid off the bed and wrapped her arm around his waist, hugging him, and reaching out to take Arthur's hand as well.   
  
"We can do this," Meredith said quietly. "Never, ever doubt that."  
  
Laurel nodded, gently planting a kiss on Dennis's temple. "We can do this."  
  
Arthur and Dennis exchanged confused glances. "We can," they muttered in chorus, sounding much less certain about it.  
  
"Hell, yeah," said Maggie. 


	7. Six

Sebastian Kane stood outside the great whirling house-machine, staring at it with wide and angry eyes. The bastard had done it... he really had constructed the machines according to the ancient designs. And from the energies that he could practically see swirling and writhing around it, the damned thing worked. That alone would have earned Cyrus Kriticos the wrath of the other sorcerer. Much less that he had Sebastian's daughter trapped inside. His hand clenched on the walking stick, knuckles white and fingers twitching with the need to do something.  
  
But as much as he would like to... this was not something that he, or the girls for that matter, should do alone. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small, antique lady's hand mirror, and shook it a little bit. It clouded over.   
  
"Erik," he said.  
  
The mist rolled over the mirror for perhaps a minute, and then it curled away towards the edges. A man about his own age, white streaks lining his temples like lightning, looked up. "Who calls?"  
  
"It's me, Erik," he told the other. "Something's happened. The Ocularis Infernum... someone's constructed the damn thing, and they're trying to open the Eye."  
  
"Then they must be stopped," Erik interrupted flatly, and Sebastian resisted the urge to throttle the man for wasting time stating the very obvious. "Do you need my assistance?"  
  
"Perhaps..." Sebastian continued, "There is a complication. My daughter and two of her friends are inside the machine... which has been cleverly constructed to look like an eclectic but rather ordinary house."  
  
Erik paused. Sebastian waited for the usual sort of comment that he anticipated from the other man... something about sacrifices needing to be made, or what could one expect from a girl, or something like that. He'd never had a terribly good opinion of the fairer sex, and they'd actually had several conversations sharing similiar views on the subject. But this was different. This was his daughter. And be damned if he was going to let her rot in some sorcerer's godforsaken machine.   
  
"What do you propose to do?" Erik asked finally.   
  
Sebastian relaxed slightly. "Nothing, at the moment. I am not entirely sure I can breach the walls. Meredith, as much as I hate to admit it, is on her own. But should she fail, and the Ocularis begin to open..."  
  
"I understand," Erik said. Sebastian doubted he did, but it was good enough.  
  
"I would prefer rescue to revenge," he interjected dryly, "But if revenge is all that is left, then it should be such that no one even considers constructing so much as a pocket-watch according to the Ocularis designs, much less this monstrosity."  
  
Erik nodded. "I will await your news... I presume this will be over within the evening?"  
  
"One way or the other."  
  
Erik nodded. The mirror clouded over again and when it cleared, he was gone. Sebastian took a deep breath.   
  
"Daughter mine, if you manage to pull this one out of your proverbial hat, I will see to it that you do not leave the house for the next month," he muttered.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The odd-looking procession was slightly longer now, as Laurel brought up the end and Meredith kept watch at point. Dennis, at his own request, was sandwiched between Arthur and Maggie, gritting his teeth and managing to put up with the constant barrage of images if it meant he didn't have to let go of anyone's hands. None of them wanted to be stuck in the house alone. At either end, the witches tried to do what they could to shield the poor psychic. It helped, a little.  
  
"You know..." Meredith said slowly as they made their careful way through the halls. "I think I'm actually starting to get a sense of how to get through the halls of this damn house."  
  
"You're kidding, right?" Maggie looked at her funny, and Meredith looked back and smiled wryly.  
  
"No, seriously. I can't figure out which hallway to go down or anything, but I know... the library's roughly that way.." she pointed back over her shoulder and to the left. "The bedroom's over that way," she pointed again, this time to their right. "My guess is there are a few more rooms around here. The rooms themselves can't really change position, just the halls. It's like a ... I don't know. Some kind of sliding door maze like they use for rats in psych labs."  
  
"Always wanted to be a rat in a maze," Arthur muttered, halfheartedly trying to make a joke. Dennis giggled, a bit high pitched, and then swallowed it back. Meredith chuckled softly, but didn't say anything.   
  
In the back, Laurel was watching Dennis, wondering what it was that he'd seen. Merry'd told her a little bit about his abilities, what she could discern anyway... and told her a little bit about his visions of his own demise here in the house. She'd asked Laurel to take a look into the webs of the future, see what the probabilities were and how they lay. Since then, Laurel had looked twice more.   
  
It didn't look good for Dennis.  
  
Over and over, she watched as the ghost slammed Dennis against the wall, practically breaking him in two. She watched the blood froth from his mouth, the pain galvanize him, the terror cross his eyes before they finally achieved that horrible blankness of death. Meredith, looking through her eyes, had grimaced and fled from her mind the first time she'd seen that. Laurel had played it over and over again, trying to be clinical and look for a way out. She wasn't seeing one.   
  
Not that Dennis needed to know this, of course. She sighed... it really wouldn't do to give the poor man any false hopes. He was already on edge enough as it is. Laurel wondered... what must it be like to live like that? Always apart from everyone else, always at one remove from the rest of humanity. She'd never known that kind of separation... none of the three of them had, for that matter. Laurel had had her aunt to teach her witchcraft... and Meredith had had her mother (and even if she hadn't, her father would have probably made a sorceress of her)... and Amber had been adopted by the local coven at such a young age that they'd been amazed at her early skill when the three of them had finally met.  
  
Dennis hadn't had any of that. Laurel wondered if at least his family life had been relatively forgiving. She knew what that was like... she'd known a young man, with five siblings and parents who were always busy trying to feed them all... the poor boy had been so empathic it had been almost painful. Eventually, he'd thrown himself off of the Golden Gate Bridge. She shuddered with the memory.   
  
No... when this was all over, then the tiny coven could take Dennis in hand, maybe introduce him to Sebastian (if Meredith's father didn't ground her first), maybe introduce him to Laurel's twin cousins, sorceress and witch, not powerful but very, very skilled. When it was all over, if they all survived, then they could teach him that he wasn't abnormal, simply part of a smaller norm. She smiled slightly at the thought. They could all have fun with that.  
  
Meredith stopped. Laurel was so distracted with her own thoughts that she nearly ran into Arthur, and stopped barely in time. "What is it?"   
  
The middle three looked around warily as Meredith held up a hand for silence, closed her eyes... and opened them again, worried. "It's right down there..." she pointed below them. "The Ocularis."  
  
Dennis frowned, knelt and put a hand on the floor. He turned pale. "So are the kids..." he said, standing and backing up. He looked like he was about to be sick.  
  
"Then we need to find a way to get downstairs," Arthur said, trying to press past Dennis. He put a hand on the other man's chest to try and move him aside, and Dennis screamed and doubled over. Arthur jumped; Maggie jumped back. Both witches dived forward, trying to calm things down.  
  
"Don't touch me!" Dennis wailed. Laurel and Meredith dropped to their knees beside him, arms encircling him protectively even as he cringed from them too. They touched their foreheads to the sides of his head, preventing him from moving.  
  
"I hate pure psionics," Meredith muttered absently. "Too hard to control."  
  
Arthur actually looked sheepish. "Sorry... I keep forgetting."  
  
Dennis was shaking, and looked even more like he was about to be sick, but he was starting to calm down. "Yeah, try living with it," he muttered, but without rancor. Laurel murmured something in his ear, and he nodded, closing his eyes and breathing slowly, more evenly. Finally they all stood together.   
  
"Anybody remember where the stairs are?" Meredith said after a second, stepping back from Dennis and propping her fists on her hips. Everyone shrugged... Dennis frowned, and started down the hall a little ways.  
  
"I think they're this way... shit!"  
  
The walls had started to move again.  
  
"Oh no..." A panel was sliding in between them... aiming directly for Dennis. He stood there, frozen, till Maggie grabbed his arm and he shrieked, pulling away.  
  
"Augh!"  
  
"Dennis!" Everybody yelled. His eyes locked onto the pane of glass, heading straight for him on a path that would bisect him from crown to crotch. He gulped.  
  
"Oh god..."  
  
"DENNIS!" Meredith grabbed his arm and yanked. Barely in time, his arm scraped against the glass as she pulled him to one side, slamming into Maggie, herself. They fell against the glass wall where Meredith had been standing and sunk to the floor.   
  
"Merry!" Laurel tried to say through the glass. The sound came through, but muffled. "Meet us downstairs! We'll try and get to the kids and the Ocularis!"  
  
Meredith nodded, catching her breath. On the other side of the wall she watched as Laurel grabbed the very startled Arthur's arm and tugged him down the hall. Maggie and Dennis looked at each other, then at her, waiting expectantly for their marching orders. It was a little while before she stood up again, and her face was pale and drawn. She took a deep breath and started moving the only way they could: down the newly formed hall to their left. "Let's go."  
  
They followed her a little ways in silence, Maggie in the middle, Dennis looking nervously over his shoulder in the rear. He seemed to be thinking about something.   
  
"That last change... that was the last ghost, wasn't it?"  
  
Meredith nodded tightly, but didn't say anything.  
  
"What..." Maggie looked from one to the other, not liking the expressions on their faces. "What does that mean?"  
  
"It means all the ghosts are loose, and Cyrus can start to power up the Ocularis now. It means the only thing he needs is the thirteenth ghost, and then he can unleash hell on earth. All he needs now is Arthur, and we're all doomed." Despite her confident tones of earlier, now she just sounded tired.  
  
"Oh." 


	8. Seven

Laurel put her hands and forehead to the pane of glass in front of her and sighed heavily, leaning on it. Her shoulders were slumped in an attitude almost of defeat. She desperately wanted to cry.  
  
Things had been going.. well, not so well, but better. She'd finally gotten away from Cyrus and met up with Merry, which had seemed like an enormous improvement. They'd had a bit of a discussion about the house, and about the psychic, Dennis. Merry had filled Laurel in on some things, and Laurel had filled Merry in on some other things. They'd had a chance to rest, catch their breath, make their plans. They'd had a chance to sit with each other, if only for a little while, which was invaluable to them, or at least to her. She'd rarely felt so alone as she had in the big machine-house with the megalomaniacal sorcerer after them, and the presence of even one of her coven-sisters was a comfort.  
  
Now they were separated again. The final ghost had been released and the clock was ticking down to what would probably be doomsday. The only person she had for company was the nice but a little dull Arthur Kriticos, and she had had no idea where Amber had been all night. What if Amber had been captured again? She'd never been as adept as Merry at ferreting out people's thoughts, emotions, and finding them by those trails. Her specialty was in sight, second or third or whatever. And she didn't want to open any kind of third eye in this house. Not with all the ghosts.   
  
And she couldn't get the images of Dennis out of her mind.  
  
Arthur Kriticos looked around uncomfortably, then put a hand on her shoulder after a little while. She took a deep breath, forced the urge to cry away. He was comforting, even if he wasn't going to be much help tonight. Evil uncle or no evil uncle, she rather liked him.  
  
"Er... Laurel?"  
  
The witch took a deep breath and silently prayed for the strength of her Goddess to sustain her. The night was far from over, and she had many things to do. "I'm okay... just... needed a second to catch my breath." She straightened up. "Got any idea where we're supposed to go?"  
  
"Not a clue..." he shrugged helplessly. "This is the first time I've been inside this house." He looked around. "I have to admit, if he had to squander the family fortune, at least he made a pretty-looking hell-machine."  
  
Laurel giggled. "I guess. But there's an element to magic that's as much aesthetics as it is ... um... rituals, I guess. Merry could explain it better, she's good with all the really technical aspects of everything... better than I am."  
  
They started down the hallway. "I never knew magic could be so... scientific," Arthur said, looking around at all the walls and some of the barely visible gears and cords."  
  
"Of course..." Laurel said absently. "It's a lot like science. There's an element of belief to it, of course... if you don't believe in some things, a lot of times the spell won't work for you. But there are some things that believe in you whether you want them to or not..." she shuddered. "And those can affect you whether you want them to or not. It's kind of like the saying about God... you may not believe in God, but He believes in you."  
  
"Or like ghosts..." Arthur commented, looking around warily.  
  
"Yeah... like ghosts."  
  
There was a long pause. Then Arthur made a sort of exaggerated coughing noise, trying to break the tension. "So what's magic like from a science point of view?"  
  
"Well... Merry's been here long enough that I'm guessing she went off into a babblefest about correspondences and concatenations and alignments and things," Laurel smiled at Arthur's nod. "It's kind of like that. There's a lot of astronomy and astrology, some herbology... some of ... I don't know what you'd call it. Some numerology, a lot of looking at charts and colors and things. Really, though, a lot of it is common sense... like.. okay, here. Take the Laws, for instance."  
  
"Laws?"  
  
"Yeah. There are Laws of Physics, and there are Laws of Magic too. Like... oh, the Law of Contagion. If two things are in close proximity, or overlap enough, they are more likely to bleed into each other. It's like having red paint and blue paint next to each other, eventually you're going to have a thin line of purple. In practical terms... Hmm. Well, okay..." she held out her hands in front of her. "The easiest way to look at it is like this. If I was a medium, and spent a certain amount of time here, on the earth plane," she turned one of her hands palm down, "and a certain amount of time here on the spectral plane... the ghost plane..." she put her other hand above that one. "Then eventually, around me, they're going to start bleeding into each other... around me, ghosts will start to appear more often, things will move, etc."  
  
Arthur blinked. "That... actually makes sense..." he said slowly, as though the thought that magic might actually make sense had never occurred to him. Laurel smiled to herself and continued.   
  
"There's... say, the Law of Origin... anything that begins as part of a whole is always associated with that whole on some level. That's probably more familiar to you with voodoo, or voudoun, actually..." she repeated, pronouncing the word oddly. "If you have a piece of someone's hair or fingernail or something, it's still a part of them, even if it's not attatched to them anymore... and you can use it to affect them. There's the Law of Conservation of Mind... which basically means you can only concentrate on so many things at one time..." her expression turned serious.  
  
"What does that mean?" Arthur asked guardedly.  
  
"Um... it's one that a lot of witches and sorcerers and other practitioners forget. If you... oh, I don't know. If you go outside of your body too much... cast your mind in too many different places. You start to lose pieces of yourself... you forget things, you forget people you know. It's like Alzheimer's... only it can happen to anyone if they're not careful."  
  
Arthur frowned. "I think I remember a story like that... some book Bobby was reading. About kids who could turn themselves into other animals... and there was one kid who got stuck in the form of a bird... I think it was a hawk, or an eagle. And after a while he almost stopped thinking like a kid... or at least, he sort of did... and the book implied that if he hadn't had his friends, he would have become a bird altogether."  
  
Laurel nodded slowly. "I think I've heard of those books... and that's exactly it. Very few people can actually turn themselves into animals anymore... actually, I don't know if anyone can. But that's one of the biggest dangers of doing that." She smiled weakly, turning a corner and leading the way down a set of stairs. "So you see, powers and magic aren't all they're cracked up to be."  
  
There was a little silence. They made their way through the glass hallways, all the while conscious that they were drawing closer and closer to the Ocularis. "What about people like Cyrus?" Arthur asked finally. "Why do they use all this power if there are so many drawbacks to it... most of them seem to mean going insane, anyway."  
  
She didn't look at him as she responded. "I don't know, Arthur... I really don't."  
  
  
  
  
Meredith took several deep breaths, running her fingers along the wall, trying to figure out the best way to get downstairs to the Ocularis. Everyone was tense, nervous... Maggie kept brushing against Dennis, who would try and stifle the screech that would invariably result, but after the first three times it was starting to get nervewracking. She made a mental note to get him some sort of mental protection when they got out of the house... if they all managed to get out of the house. First thing's first, she told herself. Rescue the children.   
  
They found the stairs, finally, and started down. By this time Maggie was in the rear, and had managed to put some distance between her and Dennis. They were conversing in low tones, and sounded agitated, but Meredith had all she could handle with trying to keep a third eye on the children, looking for Amber, and making sure Laurel was all right. Between the overlapping mental and emotional sensations that were bombarding her, her energy was starting to wear down. It didn't help that Dennis was still as nervous as a long tailed kitten in a room full of rocking chairs, and just as weak.   
  
Meredith paused at the bottom of the stairs, taking a look around and figuring it safe. "Hang on a second..." she said, rubbing her temples.  
  
"What?" Maggie yelped, and Meredith winced. "What's going on? Is there a ghost?"  
  
"No..." Meredith would have laughed if the situation hadn't robbed the question of all humor. "No, no ghost. I just... low blood sugar, I think... need something to eat." She started rummaging around in her duffel bag and pulled out a power bar.  
  
"You actually eat those?" Maggie's tone caught Dennis's attention. He seemed astonished that Meredith had taken a time-out to do something as mundane as eat.  
  
"They're energy efficient, and unfortunately I'm in a high-energy profession. It was either that or a Snickers bar," Merry smiled weakly, wolfing down the nutrient brick that only faintly tasted of chocolate.  
  
"Well, I guess..." Maggie started to say, and then Dennis saw the ghost.  
  
"Shit!!" he scurried up to press his back against the wall, eyes wide, chest heaving.  
  
"WHAT?" Maggie yelled, even as Meredith looked up and over her shoulder.  
  
"Shit!!" she echoed, slipping sideways into the spirit world and bringing her large knife up, ready to attack.  
  
She never got the chance.  
  
The Hammer swung, slamming his weapon into her side and knocking her into the wall. She had a couple of seconds to regret slipping into the ghost's world, and then her head hit the wall and lights started flashing in front of her eyes. For a moment it was hard to breathe. She took a deep (painful) breath, took a chance, and dove forward, stabbing down with her knife. The ghost screamed and raised his hammer again.  
  
"Well," she choked out, "At least I got it..." Maggie was screaming. She couldn't hear Dennis, and guessed he was having breathless hysterics on the floor. Poor guys. The Hammer would be coming after them next.  
  
Her vision blurred. The next thing she saw was a body, with a flash of the neon-and-magic glasses, flying over her legs and catching the Hammer in mid-swing.   
  
Dennis?  
  
"Hey!" he shouted. Oh no... Meredith thought, struggling to stand up against the wall. It felt like she'd broken a rib or ten. "Yeah, I'm talking to you..." Her vision was starting to clear... she could see Dennis going one-on-one with the Hammer, doing an admirable job of ducking. Unfortunately, she could also see that the Hammer was more confused than angry, and not on the attack yet. "...you little shit," Dennis finished, barely getting out of the way of the giant maul in time. "You don't scare me..." Duck, sidestep. "...you ectoplasmic weenie..." duck, skip backwards. Maggie was watching in confusion and horror, Meredith was watching in dread. Present and future images were starting to overlap, and suddenly she recalled an earlier conversation.  
  
"Dennis..." she choked out, but he didn't hear her, and she couldn't get enough breath to speak any louder. "No..."  
  
"You ain't nothing..." Duck. Dennis shifted the knife around in his hands. Meredith's heart sank.   
  
"...but a..." Maggie got the idea too, started frantically searching around for a pair of glasses that wasn't there.  
  
"BITCH!"   
  
He lunged.  
  
The Hammer swung.  
  
The maul came down straight for the middle of Dennis's spine.  
  
"NO!!!" 


	9. Eight

Author's Note: Gotcha.  
Don't worry, folks, it's almost over. One way or the other. Oh, and while I'm pondering sequals… go ahead and give me your 'shipper votes. Because I know there are those of you out there who want … people… to end up with… other people. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.  
  
  
  
Kalina stormed into the Ocularis room, barely paying attention to the whimpering children who were tied under the spinning blades. "What the hell is going on, Cyrus?" she yelled. "You said this would be easy! You said there wouldn't be anyone to interfere! Your pet psychic I can handle, but now you've got witches in on this?!" Amber's seemingly effortless bullet-dodging had left Kalina very edgy.   
  
"They are of little importance," Cyrus dismissed her concerns with a wave of his hand. "Although they might prove useful if Arthur winds up too stubborn to be easily manipulated." He looked sharply at Kalina. "And what are you doing here alone? You were supposed to be leading Arthur to this spot, convincing him to throw himself into the machine for the sake of his children. The device requires a sacrifice."  
  
Kalina swallowed. When Cyrus used that silky smooth tone, he wasn't happy. Like the cannibalistic chimpanzee, when he smiled was when he was at his most dangerous. "We got separated… those witch bitches showed up. I think the Kane chick knew what I was up to, so I had to get out of there… I had …" she stopped, deciding at the last minute not to tell Cyrus how close she'd come to capturing the other witch for him.  
  
He wasn't interested anyway. "Kane?" he asked sharply, eyebrows descending to the top of his pointed nose. "Sebastian Kane's daughter is here?"   
  
Kalina gulped, nodded, wondering what it was about the man that was concerning Cyrus so much. "Yeah… why, I thought he was just an old kook…"  
  
Cyrus shook his head, turning back to his machine and his designs. "He is as much of an old kook as I am. If Meredith Kane is here, then her father will not be far behind once he finds out that she is in danger. Fortunately the house is sealed…" From the expression on his face, though, he didn't appear to be certain that the seals would hold. Kalina was startled. She'd never thought that Cyrus would be scared of any other magician.  
  
Maybe it was time for a change of mentors… Sebastian Kane didn't have to know that she was going to threaten his daughter at gunpoint. If she helped the witch, maybe she'd be able to get in with that lot… She snapped out of it as she realized that Cyrus was talking and she hadn't been listening.  
  
"… use the girls against each other. Witches are always pathetically willing to sacrifice themselves for their beliefs, their friends, their Goddess…" Cyrus made a disgusted face.  
  
"Instead of Arthur? You want me to get one of the witches?" Kalina asked, almost dreading an affirmative answer. She'd already missed her chance to get two of them.  
  
"No… no, don't bother. The children will draw the witches to this spot, and then I can use them however I want. This is perhaps a better scenario than the one I had envisioned for you." He turned beady eyes on Kalina, and for one terrifying second she thought that her usefulness had ended, that he was going to kill her. She took a couple steps backwards, and he laughed.  
  
"Oh, stop that," he said, amused. "I'm not going to kill you."  
  
The word 'yet' hung unspoken in the air.  
  
"I have a different job for you, now. Go over…" he gestured to a corner of the room that held a glass cabinet of artifacts. "And see if you can make use of some of those devices to pinpoint Sebastian Kane's whereabouts. I would like to know if he is close enough to do us any sort of harm. Besides, it wouldn't hurt for you to figure out the use of some of those devices. Don't interrupt me for anything less than a dire emergency. If Sebastian comes within the house, deal with him."  
  
Kalina opened her mouth to ask how the hell she was supposed to deal with a sorcerer that even Cyrus was wary of. Then she closed her mouth, realizing that he wasn't likely to give her any help. Oh well. She went over to the cabinets, sighing and glaring at Cyrus when she thought he wasn't looking. At least, if she was supposed to be looking for Sebastian, she would have an excuse to approach him. Maybe the guy could get her out of this hellhole. She'd had just about as much of Kriticos as she could take, anyway.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Meredith held her breath… she wanted to close her eyes, didn't want to see the inevitably bloody demise of the sweet young man she was rapidly growing to like. Her eyes stayed stubbornly open. Then she heard the pounding footsteps, her eyes still on the maul descending towards Dennis' spine. When it fell on his shoulder instead, she sighed with relief as she heard a familiar voice shrieking.  
  
"Take that, you son of a bitch!"  
  
Amber. Beautiful, wonderful Amber. Tae Kwon Do black belt Amber. Feisty Amber, always combat ready, always preferring to charge in, kick ass, and take names later. A flying two-kick combo knocked the Hammer back several feet, even as Dennis crumpled to the ground and clutched his shoulder, moaning piteously.   
  
"I really..." Amber yelled as she dodged the maul and snap-kicked the ghost in the ribs. "Really..." she caught the arm and kicked out the knee as the maul descended, flipping the Hammer over and landing him on the ground with enough force that it would have shaken the walls if their planes of existence had intersected any more. "Really, really hate this house." She stomped on his sternum, breaking it with snap that was audible to everyone but Maggie.   
  
Meredith crawled over to Dennis. It had looked like his shoulder had been almost entirely pulverized... at the very least like it was violently knocked out of its socket. There was a cut and a bump on his head, too... probably where he'd been grazed as the maul had come down. Maggie was down the stairs by now, and Amber walked over to join them. "Impeccable timing, as always," Meredith told her, smiling slightly.  
  
Amber propped her hands on her hips and scowled. "I was in the neighborhood," she said lightly, although Meredith could tell she was pissed. "Who're...?"  
  
Maggie waved abstractedly, taking a better look at the cut on Dennis's head. "Maggie."  
  
"Dennis," he groaned weakly. "Thanks for the save... I thought I was a goner."  
  
"You very nearly were..." Meredith chided gently, pulling herself in front of him and starting to unbutton his shirt. "Don't try to move just yet... "  
  
Amber knelt down beside the both of them. "Merry, really, he's cute, but do you really think we have time for this?"  
  
Meredith rolled her eyes and ignored the comment. "...you could have anything from a dislocated shoulder to a broken collarbone, and I don't know what all else." Dennis nodded, wincing, and let her look him over. He looked up at Amber as Meredith probed his shoulder gently, blinked, and looked up again.   
  
"Why... are you flickering?"  
  
"Huh?" Maggie and Meredith said in unison, then, "Gimme those..." Maggie grabbed the glasses off of Dennis' face, and he let her. "Whoa."  
  
"Oh..." Amber looked down. Her body's image was flickering, between her vinyl jacket, shirt, and blue jeans... and her other self, slightly taller, clad in chainmail and black enameled plate armor, a design of a raven on her chest and a huge broadsword on her back. "Sorry."  
  
Meredith ignored the gaping. "Astral... or spectral, however you want to call it... form. We all have 'em. Amber's a little more... violent... than most."   
  
"If you weren't injured I'd hit you."  
  
"See what I mean?"  
  
Meredith finally finished at poking Dennis' shoulder and sat back. "Well, I don't think you've broken any bones.. which is a minor miracle, thank the Goddess. But it's definitely dislocated, and you've probably torn some muscles in your shoulder, too." She started to pull herself up, gasped, and coughed up what looked like mucus... and blood.  
  
"Merry..."  
  
"Holy crap..."  
  
They all stared at her. "Okay, sit back down..." Amber tried to get her coven-sister to sit. "You need healing, and you need it now."  
  
Meredith found reserves of strength from somewhere, pushing Amber away. "Not now. Not right now, we can't spare the energy, and you know it. Cyrus has released the last ghost. If we don't get to the Ocularis before he does, he's going to start up something to get the thirteenth ghost... and then it's going to be too late for anyone."   
  
"She's right..." Dennis pushed himself up with his good arm. "We can all go to the hospital when we've kicked that psycho's ass... ow." He winced. Amber rolled her eyes and grabbed his wrist, reaching up to his shoulder.  
  
"Hang on a sec..."  
  
"OW! Sonofa..."  
  
Maggie and Meredith chuckled. Amber pulled Dennis (much more gently this time) to his feet, and Meredith climbed back up and leaned on Maggie.   
  
"Laurel's already in position," Amber said, all levity gone from her voice. "The kids are in the Ocularis room, tied under at least three spinning circles that are probably edged with razors or something. It's like the rings around a globe, I'm guessing that's the linchpin device. Kalina's cowering in a corner. Last I looked, all the ghosts were heading there... the Hammer's just going to be a bit late. Along with a couple of others." She smiled grimly. "Beating up ghosts is more fun than beating up people... the ghosts can't sue. Anyway. I'm guessing Cyrus is going to put in his appearance soon, so we'd all better be ready."  
  
Meredith sighed, wincing as the action hurt her already damaged ribs. "Well, we're as ready as we're ever going to be... let's go."  
  
"If this is as ready as we're going to be..." Maggie muttered, "I never want to see what happens when we get caught with our pants down."  
  
Privately, Meredith agreed, but she wasn't about to tell Maggie that this was what happened when they were prepared. At least, normally prepared. She sighed; if she'd known what kind of house this was and how Cyrus Kriticos had managed to construct the Ocularis, she'd've brought her father, Laurel's cousins, Erik, John, Rose, Phillip, and a whole host of others.   
  
Instead, she was tottering along with one hand on a glass warding wall, with every breath feeling as though her ribs were stabbing into her lungs. Her back was starting to hurt now; she was almost sure she'd bruised it when she'd slammed into the wall. Hell, she'd been lucky not to break her spine. And her head hurt. She suspected concussion. She really wanted to pass out.  
  
Dennis didn't look much better. His shoulder injury had rendered his arm useless for anything but dragging along, and he looked shell-shocked to the extreme. His face was pale and slightly gray, he was sweating, and every once in a while he had to stop and lean on Amber, looking like he was about to throw up. From her expression, she was half expecting him to be sick too. She kept glancing back, giving the two women concerned looks.   
  
Meredith privately thought that throwing up might actually have been a good idea… except she didn't want her stomach heaving and complicating her half-crushed ribcage. They were a hideous sight.  
  
They could hear whimpering around the next couple of corners. Meredith closed her eyes and leaned up against a wall, wondering gloomily if this was going to be how it all ended. She wasn't in any shape to do a thing against Cyrus, and Amber had at least one mundane and two injured people to keep in mind if she launched herself at the sorcerer. As though sensing the thought, Amber set Dennis down and they all took a five-second breather.  
  
"Hey, Meredith…" Dennis' voice was weak and pained.   
  
"Merry." She didn't open her eyes.   
  
"Merry…" He took a deep breath, winced and hissed as the movement jarred something loose; he mused have gotten a broken collarbone, too. "If we don't make it…"  
  
"Don't even…" Amber said warningly. "I'll shake you. I mean it."  
  
Meredith laughed ever so slightly. "She does. You better listen to her, Dennis."  
  
Dennis actually laughed. It was tired, and it was rusty, but it was an actual laugh. She couldn't remember … was it his second or third laugh of the evening? It sounded good on him. "You guys have been the greatest…" Meredith opened her eyes and sat up, staring at him. "Just figured I'd tell you that."  
  
"Yeah?" Maggie looked kind of startled, but was smiling. Amber and Meredith exchanged grins.   
  
"Don't worry," Amber said dryly, very carefully helping Dennis back to his feet and slinging his good arm over her shoulder. "You'll get plenty of chances to flatter our egos when we get out of here and get you into a hospital. Both of you," she glared over her shoulder at Meredith.  
  
"Yes, mother." Meredith swallowed, leaned on Maggie as they all tottered forward and around the corner. "Once more into the breach, dear friends?"  
  
There was silence, except for Dennis muttering something. At first she thought it was a prayer, and she smiled at the thought of Dennis being that religious… he hadn't seemed the type. Then she really heard it, and it gave her chills.   
  
"Their's not to make reply… Their's not to reason why… Their's but to do and die."  
  
"Into the valley of death rode the six hundred." 


	10. Nine

Naturally, it didn't go as smoothly as any of the three witches would have hoped.   
  
Because of Meredith and Dennis' injuries they couldn't go charging in as they'd wanted to. Laurel had sent Arthur in ahead to talk to Cyrus, to stall him. Amber was going to rush him with the sword once he was distracted; they'd reasoned that once he was dead and Kalina was at least unconscious, they could worry about turning off the Ocularis then. Unfortunately, that just wasn't the way things worked out.  
  
Arthur and Cyrus argued, Amber rushed in with her sword drawn and her eyes blazing. Cyrus stepped to one side and brought up his own weapon, a cane much like the one Meredith's father had. Only this one...  
  
Meredith gasped.  
  
Amber noticed just in time to roll with the impact, but not quick enough to get out of the way. The cane impacted on her ribs with a flash of what could only be described as negative light. A flash of blackness, of shadow so complete that it dragged light into it. She flew across the room, narrowly missing Maggie, Dennis, and Meredith.  
  
"Oh shit..." Maggie muttered.  
  
Amber's eyes practically glowed, she was so angry. Meredith could hear her mutter, "Oh, you're going to pay for that, you bastard..." right before she put out a hand to stop her. Unfortunately, she hadn't reckoned on Dennis lunging forward.   
  
"Dennis, no!"   
  
In a way, she understood why he was doing it, why he had thrown himself at the ghost after she'd been crushed against the wall. In his place, she might have done something very similar. He felt responsible for the whole thing, felt as though if he hadn't agreed to imprison the ghosts with Cyrus, this whole thing wouldn't be happening, they wouldn't be getting hurt, nearly killed. The guilt leaked through Meredith's shields, eating away at her like cancer, making her heart ache, adding to the pains in her chest. She exchanged a look with Amber and Laurel, a look of pity and compassion and worry, right before Cyrus clotheslined Dennis with the cane and actually lifted him a very short ways into the air with the impact.  
  
The young man flipped backwards, going down in a sprawling heap of gangly arms and legs. He screamed as the movement jarred his shoulder, bruised his spine. He screamed again as the cane slammed down into his leg with the sound of snapping bones. Amber rushed Cyrus again before he had a chance to bring the cane down a third time, but was once again knocked backwards, this time knocking Laurel down as well.  
  
"You little whores..." Cyrus said, his voice low and unpleasant. "You think you can march in here and dictate to me what I will do? You don't even have the faintest comprehension of what I will accomplish with this machine..." Meredith pushed herself up against the wall, trying not to scream as she felt something pop in her chest. This sounded like it was going to turn into a full blown rant, which was good. It gave her time to figure out what the hell Kalina was doing.  
  
"You think that because you know a few tricks, with a little love, a little goodness, that it'll all be all right... you..." he pointed at Meredith, who prayed silently that he wasn't going to do anything too drastic. "You think that because you have the blood of a sorcerer, that you can match yourself against a sorcerer..." he sneered. Meredith swallowed and closed her eyes... just yelling. She could handle yelling.  
  
"You," he pointed at Amber, "You think that the power of your long-forgotten Goddess will give you the ability to win any fight. Your Goddess is dead, girl, and you haven't even begun to fight for anything real." He pointed at Laurel. "You think that you can heal everything, that goodness and the light will always prevail."  
  
Meredith ignored this... as long as he was ranting at her coven-sisters, she could focus on what Kalina was doing. It involved something in a case in the far corner of the room, something that looked like a box, or a small wire cage. Most probably it was a containment spell of some kind, but was she trying to trap the ghosts, or one of them?  
  
A movement from Cyrus distracted her as he brought his cane down and stood in an attitude of perfect calm, spoke softly and evenly. That was more chilling than any ranting he had done so far. "Arthur, you fool. You've put your trust in girls who don't know what they're doing." He could have been chiding his brother for making a bad investment.   
  
Meredith frowned, squinting at Kalina's face, trying to read her lips while her head was bowed and her face turned away. What was she saying? What was she doing? ... Did it really matter? Kalina had never been particularly pleasant when they'd last met, and now she was definitely working for Cyrus. That spell would have to go. But Cyrus was changing direction again...  
  
"And you..." he turned to Dennis, who started scrambling backwards frantically as soon as the sorcerer turned his attention on him. "Dennis Rafkin. A nobody of little power and less worth who thought he could stop me. Poor Dennis..." he mocked. "Poor, pathetic, whining Dennis. Did you honestly think you could stop me? Tell the truth." He leaned in closer. "Did you honestly want to?"  
  
Dennis moaned, trying to retreat further. Meredith reached out a hand to try and drag him behind her, try and put herself between the sorcerer and the psychic. It didn't work. Cyrus grabbed him by the throat and swung him up and around, putting his back to her and practically lifting Dennis off the ground.   
  
"You thought that they would protect you. You thought that if you stopped me, it would magically make your life better. I have an idea for you, Dennis, NOTHING is going to make your life better. Nothing. You are a pathetic, whimpering article who doesn't know the first thing about making efficient use of what he has given. You do not deserve the gifts you were born with..." Cyrus's fingers tightened around Dennis's throat. "And you certainly do not deserve to live."  
  
Kalina looked up from the box and grinned spitefully.  
  
Arthur started to babble, pleading for Cyrus to stop the killing.  
  
The children, weeping and crying since they'd entered the room, stared silently through the whirling blades.  
  
"Good-bye, Rafkin."  
  
Chaos.   
  
"Wait."  
  
Meredith's quiet, thickly choked voice somehow managed to break through Dennis's hoarse gasps, Cyrus's ranting, Arthur's pleading, and the kids' screaming. Her mind raced as she tried to reconcile her words with her thoughts... why had she spoken up? She didn't have a plan. She didn't have an idea of what to do. They were all going to die, right here and now, and she was going to give them a slow death instead of a quick one... panic chased her thoughts in circles for seconds that seemed to last aeons. She didn't know what to do. Dear Goddess, she prayed. Don't let me fail them.   
  
Calm seemed to fall over her. In the distance, like the sounds of the seashore, Meredith could hear the ravens calling. She felt the familiar mantle of huge black wings settle on her like a cloak over her shoulders, or a mother's embrace. Her pain lessened, pulled back enough for her to concentrate. Words echoed in her mind, and she knew what she had to do. "Wait." Everyone turned and looked at her; she stood at the edge of the center of the Ocularis.  
  
Cyrus turned back and looked at her as though she'd finally done something interesting. "Yes?"  
  
"If I ..." she paused, wondering how to phrase it. She had to give enough of a hint so that Amber at least would understand. "Give myself to the Ocularis, will you let him go? Let him live?"  
  
Kalina opened her mouth to protest, then seemed to remember that she hadn't actually told anyone about the activation mechanism, and stopped. Then she looked puzzled. Perhaps she was remembering that the witches had guessed anyway.  
  
"Now that's a curious proposal..." Cyrus smiled. It was a very nasty smile. Unable to speak, Dennis' eyes widened and he shook his head frantically, mouthing words at her. Don't do it. Don't. Arthur and Maggie were staring at her in horror and confusion. "You would willingly give up your life to save this..." he squeezed Dennis' throat a little tighter and shook him till he choked. "Witless, spineless boy?"  
  
She giggled a little at the word 'spineless,' remembering the events of a few moments ago. The action sent fiery pain shooting through her sides again, and she fell to her knees. "Yes," she whispered. The pain burned for a few more minutes, and then she could stand again.  
  
Amber and Laurel stared at her in confusion, wondering just what the hell she was up to. She could hear their voices clamoring in confusion outside her mind; calmly, she shut it out. She needed to concentrate now.   
  
"You, who barely know this boy... you would sacrifice your life for him... for what? Your witch's principles?"  
  
Bide by the Wiccan Rede ye must... Her lips formed the whisper. Her thoughts projected it onto Laurel and Amber. Their eyes widened. Meredith flexed her ethereal wings, briefly glad that neither Cyrus nor Kalina had their glasses on. The ghosts were all visible, they didn't need them. Amber and Laurel could see the wings, though... she only hoped they understood.  
  
"Yes."  
  
Cyrus's eyes gleamed. "And you know what will happen after that, don't you...? You do. You must..." he seemed almost to take delight in coercing a witch to sacrifice herself, a true sacrifice of love. "And you make the sacrifice willingly."  
  
"Perfect love..." she murmured. "Yes."  
  
Briefly, too fast for Cyrus to follow, one eyelid flickered, winking. Amber's eyes brightened.  
  
"All right."  
  
Cyrus released Dennis, who fell to one side, gasping for air. He landed on his injured shoulder, screamed hoarsely, curled around himself, and then somehow crawled to his knees. Amber and Laurel held Maggie and Arthur back, and Cyrus laughed. "No, don't do anything stupid, Arthur. I have my fist around the boy's heart... and your children's hearts. One wrong move and they all die." There were gasps of horror around the room from everyone except Kalina, who was looking positively gleeful..   
  
"Merry..." Dennis choked out, rolling his eyes up in his head to look at her as best as he could. She was struggling to breathe under the heavy wings, struggling to walk forward. "You don't have to do this... please. Don't..."  
  
"It's okay, Dennis... It's all going to be okay." she found herself whispering. She was smiling. "I am a true daughter of the Morrighan. It's all going to be okay." It wouldn't mean anything to him. Oh well.   
  
She took as deep a breath as she could manage and stood straight, wincing as pain shot up her spine as well. She locked eyes with Cyrus and took a step forward, towards the spinning, razor-sharp blades. Another step. Dennis made a whimpering noise in the back of his throat. Maggie turned away. The kids started screaming again, and Meredith shut it out. Another step. Kalina was almost cackling with glee. Another step. Cyrus licked his lips with anticipation. Amber flickered in and out of street clothes, to armor and back, blinking crazy. Laurel edged towards Kalina. Meredith was almost in the blades now. Another step...  
  
Bang!  
  
Meredith lunged forward and covered the two kids with her body just as the spinning wheels exploded upwards and outwards. Shards flew everywhere, cutting her back to ribbons. She could hear screaming, crying, the sound of moving bodies. All around her, the glass was shattering as pieces of the Ocularis flew through the walls at many miles per hour. It seemed to go on and on, even as the kids squirmed underneath her and crushed her already injured ribs. She gritted her teeth and held on. Finally, what seemed like centuries later, it was over. She rolled off of the kids and lay there, panting.  
  
"What the HELL was that?" Maggie yelled as she staggered to her feet. Meredith was just able to see that she was okay... cuts and bruises from the flying debris, but otherwise unhurt. Arthur, Laurel, and Amber looked all right for the most part as well; Laurel was standing over the unconscious body of Kalina.   
  
Cyrus lay on the floor a little ways away, very obviously dead.   
  
"Magic..." Meredith said as she lay on her back and giggled. Then she gasped as the wings, the ravens, and the protections left her. All the pain came flowing back. And an irritable voice in the back of her mind... "Someone let my father in? He's demanding to know what's going on."  
  
Laurel chuckled. "I'll go keep him from grounding you for your next ten lifetimes," she said, and started off. "You going to be okay?"  
  
Meredith rolled onto her side and pushed herself up, making sure to stay out of the way of the kids stampeding towards their father. "Nothing a good hospital and several tabs of codeine won't cure..." she sighed. Laurel nodded and left.   
  
"No, seriously..." Maggie said, picking her way over to the Kriticos family through the glass. "What happened? Why'd the Ocu-thingie explode?"  
  
Amber crunched over and knelt by Dennis, checking him for cuts and bruises. He looked dazed and in shock, but he'd been either prone or hunched over throughout the explosion and had suffered very little as a result. "It took me a while to figure it out, but after the first few seconds..."  
  
"The key," Meredith coughed, "Was what Cyrus called my 'witch's principles.' " She looked over at Amber, not sure how to explain it.  
  
"Bide by the Wiccan Rede ye must In perfect love and perfect trust."  
  
Meredith shrugged. "It sounds really, really tacky when you say it, but it's true. Cyrus listened to all the flakes out there, believed witches were all sweetness and light. We aren't. He thought that by my walking towards the blades... a sacrifice of perfect love... I was finishing his machine, powering it up. He forgot about the perfect trust part."  
  
"A group of witches..." Amber continued, picking up Dennis almost bodily, "... especially one as close-knit as the bunch of us... we've been together so long... we trust each other, we have each other's backs. Meredith took all the attention off of us when she was walking towards the Ocularis, and cued us by referring to the Rede." She half-carried Dennis over to Meredith's duffel bag and propped him up against it. "Merry, you got blankets in here? I think he's going into shock."  
  
"I'm fine."  
  
"Shut up. You get no say in this. Merry?"  
  
Meredith laughed weakly. "Sure..." She tottered over to the group. "The Ocularis exists in both the physical and the spectral realms. Amber pitched her sword into the rings just before I got there. It jammed them up, and the force of it all... well, simple physics. What happens when you put a stick in the gears." She shrugged. "Boom."  
  
"Perfect trust."  
  
Maggie stared from one witch to the other. "You guys are completely out of your damn minds, you know that, right?"  
  
Meredith and Amber just looked at each other. They started to giggle. Maggie looked at them, her arms around Bobby as Arthur hugged and comforted his daughter, and then she looked at Bobby and they started to giggle too. Kathy started giggling next. Then Arthur. Then, suddenly, they were all on the floor, rolling around in the debris and laughing hysterically. For the next fifteen minutes, as Laurel came in with her father and an ambulance crew in tow, they couldn't stop laughing. Meredith was even giggling tiredly as she was loaded onto the ambulance, her worried (and not a little bit angry) father hovering over her like some sort of deranged Drosselmeyer.  
  
Dennis was the only one not laughing. He watched the witches surreptitiously clean up the obvious material-plane weaponry and fuss over their friend, watched Arthur and the children huddle together and stumble out of the house. He watched the cleanup and beginnings of the impromptu victory celebration. He wondered why he felt so empty. 


	11. Epilogue

"So, now what?"   
  
Dennis and Meredith were the only ones left awake in the room. Sebastian, muttering ominous things about being confined to the house for the duration, had finally packed off home to tell everyone to stand down and to clean up the mess at the Kriticos house. Arthur, Maggie, and the family, after making sure that the two would be okay and promising to keep in touch, had left for their home as well. Bobby and Kathy, once they'd gotten over their fright, thought the three women were the coolest thing since Star Wars.   
  
Amber and Laurel had performed a bizarre variant on rock-paper-scissors that they called microwave-tinfoil-cat to see who stayed in the hospital with the two. Laurel had won out, sent Amber home, and proceeded to curl up in a chair under a hospital blanket and sleep. She had also instructed Dennis and Meredith very firmly to sleep as well, but the adrenaline rush was still going and the pain medications hadn't kicked in yet. Neither of them could relax, much less sleep.  
  
"What do you mean, now what?"  
  
There was a pause. Meredith tried to pinpoint what emotions were resonating through is voice, but he was doing a remarkably good job at remaining blank, for once. She supposed it had something to do with them not being in immediate danger.  
  
"Dennis?"  
  
He listened to her voice and hurt, not just the broken bones, but inside. He didn't know how, but somehow right outside of his realm of experience there had been a world that he could have been at home in, a world he could have lived in if he'd only found it. She had... she'd grown up in it. She would get to go out of the hospital and go home to a warm bed, and probably a cat or a dog or maybe even a boyfriend to share it with. She would get to go home and laugh about it with her friends later, when everything had healed up. They'd probably all have a good laugh about the crazy psychic they'd met in the evil house. The crazy, ineffectual psychic who hadn't been able to do a damn thing to stop the madman and save the kids.   
  
He'd get to go from the hospital to a cold apartment and a cold, creaky bed. If he was lucky.  
  
"Dennis? What's up? What do you mean, now what?"  
  
Dammit, he'd brought it up. Now he'd have to talk about it. But on some deep level that he didn't want to look at too closely, he wanted to get into her world. He wanted the warmth and the lights and the friends. Dennis took a deep breath, coughed a little, and looked over at her. What the hell, he figured. "Well, I'm in the hospital. I'm out of a job. I've got all these visions that I don't know what the hell to do with. I'm broke, and I don't know anyone in this shithole except Cyrus. I didn't even know Kalina. I stole an electrician's uniform to get into the house the first time, so I'm probably wanted for that. I'm probably going to get evicted when I go home, if I don't get arrested first..." He trailed off.  
  
Meredith frowned. She had known he was bad off, but she hadn't known how bad. And even with all that, he was still far and away the most together of the pure psychics she'd known or heard about. The ones who weren't hawking their talents on national TV. And those were almost always the weakest. Dennis wasn't weak, no matter what Cyrus said. "Wow..." she couldn't think of anything comforting to say, although a plan was forming in her mind. "That... sucks."  
  
There was a slightly uncomfortable silence. Dennis thought of something. "Arthur said if he could find the money Cyrus stole from his family, he'd pay me what Cyrus promised to pay me. Only problem is, I'm not sure the money's still there."  
  
"Probably not, knowing what I do of the bastard." Meredith sighed. She had no idea how to manage this, but if she could lead him where she needed him to go... "I'm sorry, Dennis..." she started to say. "I had no idea..."  
  
"No, it's okay," he interrupted. He sounded almost disappointed. "I just... it's..." There was a long silence. Meredith held her breath. Dammit. She hoped he wasn't assuming what she thought he was. He hadn't even asked her...  
  
"It's just ... what?"   
  
"It's just that... you guys seem to have it all together. Your gifts, or whatever. You can do shit I can't even dream of, and you don't get these blinding migraines or wild seizures that I get whenever I touch just about anything... it's not even abnormal to you guys. It's like... having an allergy to nuts or something. You don't think people are freaks because they go crazy and start talking to people who aren't even there..." Bitterness from long ago seeped all through his voice, old hurt and pain dripped from his words. Meredith bit her lip.  
  
"Dennis... we've practically grown up with this. We've been trained... some of us almost from birth... to deal with stuff like this. To live just enough in the mundane world that we can make a living at it, and just enough in our weird-ass world so that we can survive in it. It's not your fault. No one told you anything... you're flying blind."  
  
He didn't say anything.  
  
"You know, you've done pretty well for yourself as it is... you being a 'pure' psychic... you don't do the rituals or the magickal stuff or any of that. You don't have the comfort of the faith, or the protection of a brotherhood or an order. You just have visions, nightmares. And ... well, most pure psychics go insane before the age of twenty, if not sooner," she said quietly. "Most pure psychics commit suicide before the age of twenty five." She didn't want to know how old he was.  
  
"I don't want to keep living like this," Dennis said after a pause. "It hurts, and it scares the hell out of me. I'm sick of being a freak. I want to be able to live a normal goddamn life. I'm sick of being..." He swallowed. The tension in the room was palpable. "Can you help me?"  
  
Meredith was silent for a few seconds, just long enough for Dennis to worry. Her eyes were closed, and she sighed. "Of course we can, you big goofball," she smiled. Relief and amusement sang out in her voice. "We would have offered, but.... It seems silly, but we can never impose that help on you. On anyone. You had to ask for our help. Otherwise we'd've snatched you up and dragged you out of this hospital to ... probably to my place. You can even stay at my place, if you're that worried about it. Or with Laurel." She yawned. It had been a long day. "After all, it's not often we come across pure psychics... especially not as talented or as..." she trailed off.  
  
Dennis had his eyes closed, much relieved, relaxing and letting her words wash over him. After all the horrors of the day... two minutes of conversation and suddenly life didn't seem that bad anymore. He started to smile. Maybe things could work out after all. "As... what?" he asked, for once in his miserable life actually feeling up to teasing a girl, flirting. Normal stuff.   
  
She didn't respond.   
  
"Merry?"   
  
More silence. He was about to ring for the nurse in alarm when he heard the soft sounds of her breathing, calm and even and regulated in sleep. The medications must have finally kicked in. Now that he was thinking about it, he was noticing his own meds kicking in too. Between that and the sheer force of the relief he felt, he was starting to notice that he was pretty exhausted.  
  
"Oh. Ok." He closed his eyes, still smiling. "Talk to you about it in the morning, I guess."   
  
"G'night Dennis," he heard her mumble, and shift slightly in her bed.  
  
"G'night Merry."  
  
He opened his eyes. "Merry..." Closed his eyes again.  
  
"Mmm?"  
  
"Why is there a cat in the room?"  
  
He drifted off to sleep to the sound of her quiet, delighted laughter. 


End file.
